Land Grant Law and Legal Definition
The term 'land grant' is used to refer to a government grant or gift of a public land to a person, group of people, or an institution. For example, to railway or college. A land-grant university or college is entitled to support from the federal government under the provisions of the Morrill Acts.
Pursuant to 7 USCS § 301, “there be [is] granted to the several States, for the purposes hereinafter mentioned, an amount of public land, to be apportioned to each State a quantity equal to thirty thousand acres for each senator and representative in Congress to which the States are respectively entitled by the apportionment under the census of eighteen hundred and sixty”.
Congress has declared that “the establishment, endowment, and continuing support of land-grant universities in the United States by Federal, State, and county governments has led to agricultural progress with and through the private sector in this country and to understanding processes of economic development”; and that “the land-grant and other universities in the United States have demonstrated over many years their ability to cooperate with international agencies, educational and research institutions in other countries, the private sector, and nongovernmental organizations worldwide, in expanding global agricultural production, processing, business and trade, to the benefit of aid recipient countries and of the United States”. [22 USCS § 2220a]
